These past few months have been a cocoon of work and home and work. The biggest excitement I’ve had is finding a new show to watch (Atlanta!). Other than that it’s been the usual post holiday hibernation. Which I actually love.

But not today. Today I shook sh&t up.

That’s what my husband calls it. We’ve done it before.

Hey we’re in our 20s and have no prospects for the future… let’s have a baby!

Hey there’s a new job that requires us to uproot our family and move to a town where we don’t know anyone…let’s do it!

This is what the salon looked like afterwards. Like a hair crime scene.

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It was so much hair that other stylists came over to talk to my stylist.

“I never get to have fun like that,” they said

“Ugh! My person wanted an 8th of an inch taken off,” they cried

Not me. You could have made a tiny wig with my leftover hair.

Why you ask? What made me do it? I truthfully decided on getting this cut about 2 weeks ago.

Here’s the part where I share the story and you try hard to not think I’m crazy.

For the 25+ years I’ve known my husband he’s tried to get me jewelry. Sometimes it’s completely right-on. Most times it’s…off. This is not news for him to hear. I’m good at a lot of things, but one of them is not pretending. My face shows all my truths instantly. He’s had his heart-broken by my narly look after many an important gift giving moment. Christmas morning. Birthday dinner. Valentines…you get it. I’m horrible. As you can also imagine after years of this kind of emotional gamble – he’s stopped. And I’m totally ok with it. And actually our gift giving to each other has kind of faded. Which sounds sad but it’s not. It’s awesome. It’s a relief. Judging yet? It’s ok. I’d judge us too.

But two weeks ago he surprised me with a set of beautiful, dreamy, totally me earrings. These earrings were made for me. They are simply the best gift I’ve ever gotten from him. The. Best. Almost like he’s waited for a decade to get me the perfect gift.

Cut to today. I started thinking about Thursday, when I’ve asked him to take me and my earrings out for dinner. I can’t wait. But something was off. You couldn’t really see my earrings because my hair had gotten super long and super out of control.

So I decided there was only one thing to do. Chop my hair.

When I showed my husband he laughed and said,”Look at you. Shaking sh&t up”

Sometimes on a Sunday morning, when we aren’t traveling or visiting family I like to go to my favorite place of worship – the blow out bar. No offense to the other places of worship but they don’t make me feel as good.

Do you have a blow out bar near you? Are you hooked? I used to go to my hair salon to get this done – but I always felt a little guilty. Like I was under utilizing the joint. No cut, no color, just a quick 30 minute procedure. A few months ago a friend told me about a new place that opened up near us (ok not NEAR, but you know, next town over). It’s a dream. Walk in walk out.

During my last visit, the stylist told me that I should be able to keep my hair in good condition – no washing – for 4 days. Four days. 96 hours without a shampoo.

I know my sister-in-law Colleen is gagging. She needs to wash her hair every day. I know my husband is wondering when I find time to go (I make time), and I know my friend Howard is reading this post and asking,” what is this F’ing post about?”.

It’s about not washing my hair for 4 days!!!

Here’s how she she convinced me:

She said hair goes through cycles, it’s dry then oily then dry. We are so panicked when it gets a little oily that we jump to washing it. But those oils aren’t dirt – your hair needs those oils.

Unless you are sweating during a workout or in sand or actual dirt – your hair stays clean a long time. Sweating during a workout. That’s hysterical.

If you are really grossed out by day 3 – use a dry shampoo to help refresh (although she thinks it’s not needed)

What’s the harm in trying? And you can sleep 20 more minutes. Done.

So I’m on day 4. Does it look as amazing as day 1? No. Do I have to tease it a bit to get some life – oh yes indeed.

I don’t know if I’ll do it again – it was tricky to shower every day without getting it wet. My shower felt incomplete. But extra sleep and no blow dryer in the morning is awful tempting.

It’s hot here. It’s so hot and sticky and uncomfortable that when you’re in the shade and it’s a cool 99 degrees, you think you’re happy. You are delusional my friend. It’s still awful. I’ve made thinking about, complaining about, whining about the weather a full-time job. That’s probably because my kids are both away so I have to fill my days obsessing about other things. Although I’m doing so much better than last year – here’s my camp tale from last year incase you missed it!

Anyway – back to the present. Because my nights aren’t spent bossing kids around or driving kids around or driving them crazy – I’ve been doing fun stuff. Stuff like not doing the laundry. Do you know how much fun you can have when you don’t do laundry? I’ve also been not cooking, not cleaning, and not leaving the house. It’s been a hoot.

I’ve also gone totally nuts and started using my kids’ bathroom. Note to self: add “having your own bathroom” to your list of things to look forward to when the kids move out. Ofcourse part of the fun of using their bathroom is using their products. Truthfully it’s my daughter’s products. My son uses whatever bottle he finds to wash everything from his hair to his toes. He once used just conditioner for a whole week. True story.

So while plundering her products – I discovered this little beauty.

If you have sleek, smooth, frizz free hair – don’t use this product. But if you, like me, dream of the non-brillo head without a straightening iron – this is for you! If you read this blog regularly (thank you so much if you do) – you know that I have been trying to go “free” with my hair. No products. No blow-outs. No nothin’. It’s been rough. I’ve been wearing a lot of headbands. And hats. And paper bags.

After one use of this amazing, great smelling product, here’s what my hair looked like. Air dried. No products. I swear on my blog.

All through high school my hair was long. Really long. Down to my butt long. It was wavy and thick and beautiful. The week before I graduated I got it all cut off – thanks to Tasha Fogelman and her continuous peer pressure.

That’s when it all went down hill. My long waves became short frizz.

In college it didn’t matter. No one cared. It was cool to not care.

Then I got my first real city jobs working with city girls. Everyone had straight, sleek hair. I discovered this magical thing called a blow-out. It was so…civilized.

Since then I’ve dedicated a good deal of my life to straightening my hair. Flat square brushes, big round brushes, anti-frizz serum. Those are my friends.

That’s my defense. I was so young, I didn’t know better. All the popular kids were doing it. I was lured into it.

And by the way – where were all the parental figures in my life that could have saved me from this fate? Turns out, they were right next to me doing the same thing. Oh well. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger – that’s what Kelly Clarkson told me. Anyway, it’s time to come clean now. To open up all my cobwebbed secrets and get them out of my head – or off my head. It’s time you all know about my deepest, darkest time. Although back then I thought I was happy. I thought I was rockin’ life. I thought I was cool. Sigh. Don’t judge me, just learn from me. I was addicted to my…

PERM.

Not a long, flowing ringlets perm. This was a short, tight, helmut head perm. And I loved it. I was 10 and delusional.

With all this Michelle Obama bang talk I started thinking about my hair through the years. I rocked my hair styles yo. Sadly, some of the those styles were hideous and scary in hindsight. But that’s normal right? Right?

Listen, I had dark black hair. I couldn’t bleach it or lemon it or turn it funky colors like my blond haired pals (I’m talking to you Kelly Jensen), the most drastic thing I could do was curl it. And boy did I.

Because I’ve been absent from writing for a bit I feel like I owe you all. Big time.

To you from me PinkyLee (any Grease fans out there?). I added a recent picture of myself so you see that bad 80’s perms really do grow out and because I do not want that picture to be your lasting impression of me. Although it’ll take a while to shake the image from your mind’s eye. Trust me.

Sorry the old photo is a mess, I had to dig it out of my drawer of shame.

Phew. Now I feel better. Now we are even. All debts are paid. In full.

I was cleaning out some pictures last night and found this beauty. Had to share. I’m all about the share. This is from a trip we took to Jamaica over 8 years ago – my baby was 6 months, my girl was 5.

Let me set the scene.

It was day 3 into the trip. Every time we went to the beach, really nice, really pushy women would ask to braid our hair. I’d always politely decline. My girl was desperate to get it done. She wanted those beads in her hair. She had visions of going home with a new, exotic look.

This particular day, we had already hit the beach and the pool and were taking an afternoon siesta (yes, I know, wrong country, wrong language). The baby and I fell into a deep, vacation induced nap. When I woke up there was a note from my husband,” went to grab a snack with Kera. Back soon.”

45 minutes and $100 US dollars later – this is who showed up at the hotel room.

Since I had just woken up from my vacation nap and was looking forward to a vacation cocktail before dinner – I ignored the fact that my husband had been completely bamboozled by both my girl and the nice ladies on the beach. I had visions of the ladies back in their homes, laughing, hard.

I let it all go and grabbed my camera to take this picture of my little Jamaican cutie on our balcony.

5 minutes after this picture was taken she made us take out all the braids – they were too tight and itchy. The end.